Modi - India's divider in chief - TIME

Of the great democracies to fall to populism, India was the first. Advent of Modi is at once an inevitability and a calamity for India. The country offers a unique glimpse into both the validity and the fantasy of populism.

• This secularism was more than merely a separation between religion and state; in India, it means the equal treatment of all religions by the state, although to many of its critics some being more equal than others. 
• Indian Muslims were allowed to keep Shari’a-based family law, while Hindus were subject to the law of the land.
• Narendra Modi, the son of a tea seller, and his election was nothing short of a class revolt at the ballot box. It was no longer about left, or right, but something more fundamental.
• The nation’s most basic norms, such as the character of the Indian state, its founding fathers, the place of minorities and its institutions, from universities to corporate houses to the media, were shown to be severely distrusted. 
• The cherished achievements of independent India–secularism, liberalism, a free press–came to be seen in the eyes of many as part of a grand conspiracy in which a deracinated Hindu elite, in cahoots with minorities from the monotheistic faiths, such as Christianity and Islam, maintained its dominion over India’s Hindu majority.
• Modi attacked once unassailable founding fathers, such as Nehru, then sacred state ideologies, such as Nehruvian secularism and socialism; he spoke of a “Congress-free” India; he demonstrated no desire to foster brotherly feeling between Hindus and Muslims. Most of all, his ascension showed that beneath the surface of what the elite had believed was a liberal syncretic culture, India was indeed a cauldron of religious nationalism, anti-Muslim sentiment and deep-seated caste bigotry. 
• The country had a long history of politically instigated sectarian riots, most notably the killing of at least 2,733 Sikhs in the streets of Delhi after the 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. The Congress leadership, though hardly blameless, was able to separate itself from the actions of the mob. Modi, by his deafening silences after more recent atrocities, such as the killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, proved himself a friend of the mob. 
• Modi, without offering an alternative moral compass, rubbished the standards India had, and made all moral judgment seem subject to conditions of class and culture warfare. 
• When, in 2019, Modi tweets, “You know what is my crime for them? That a person born to a poor family is challenging their Sultunate [sic],” he is trying to resurrect the spirit of 2014, which was the spirit of revolution. 
• In 2014, Modi converted cultural anger into economic promise. He spoke of jobs and development. Taking a swipe at the socialist state, he famously said, “Government has no business being in business.”
• Not only has Modi’s economic miracle failed to materialize, he has also helped create an atmosphere of poisonous religious nationalism in India. One of his young party men put it baldly, “If you are with Modi, you are with India. If you are not with Modi, then you are strengthening anti-India forces.” 
• India’s Muslims, 14% of the population, have been subjected to episode after violent episode, in which Hindu mobs, often with the state’s tacit support, have carried out a series of public lynchings in the name of the holy cow. Hardly a month goes by without the nation watching yet another enraged Hindu mob falls upon a defenseless Muslim. The most enduring image of Modi’s tenure is the sight of Mohammad Naeem in a blood-soaked undershirt in 2017, begging the mob for his life before he is beaten to death. The response of leadership in every instance is the same: virtual silence. Basic norms and civility have been so completely vitiated that Modi can no longer control the direction of the violence. Once hatred has been sanctioned, it is not always easy to isolate its target, and what the BJP has discovered to its dismay is that the same people who are willing to attack Muslims are only too willing to attack lower-caste Hindus as well. 
• Under Modi minorities of every stripe–from liberals and lower castes to Muslims and Christians–have come under assault. Far from his promise of development for all, he has achieved a state in which Indians are increasingly obsessed with their differences. If in 2014 he was able to exploit difference in order to create a climate of hope, in 2019 he is asking people to stave off their desperation by living for their differences alone.

The incumbent Modi may win again–the opposition, led by Rahul Gandhi, an unteachable mediocrity and a descendant of Nehru, is in disarray–but Modi will never again represent the myriad dreams and aspirations of 2014. Then he was a messiah, ushering in a future too bright to behold, one part Hindu renaissance, one part South Korea’s economic program. Now he is merely a politician who has failed to deliver, seeking re-election. Whatever else might be said about the election, hope is off the menu. Modi is merely a politician who has failed to deliver, seeking re-election and what he might do to punish the world for his own failures, if he gets a second term? 

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Delhi archbishop warns of threat to India's secular fabric

 

The archbishop of Delhi has called for a prayer campaign until the next general election in an unprecedented political intervention, citing a threat to the country’s secular fabric, triggering angry reactions from the ruling Hindu nationalist party. "We are witnessing a turbulent political atmosphere which poses a threat to the democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution and the secular fabric of our nation," Archbishop Anil Couto wrote in a letter issued this month to all parish priests and religious institutions in the archdiocese of Delhi.

• Christians constitute less than 3 percent of Hindu-majority India’s 1.3 billion people. India is officially secular, but four-fifths of its population profess the Hindu faith.
• The BJP said the letter was akin to calling people to vote along communal lines, and that it was unfortunate. The next election has to be held by next May.
• The Archbishop’s secretary, Father Robinson Rodrigues sad that such prayer campaigns took place before every general election, but the exercise was being politicised this time.
• The spokesman for the Delhi Catholic Archdiocese, Father Savarimuthu Sankar, said the archbishop only called for a prayer campaign not an election campaign. He said the letter, the first of its kind from Archbishop Anil Couto since he was installed in 2013, was prompted by continued violence against Christians over the past four years and following attempts to bring back to Hinduism people who converted to Christianity. We try to influence at least those people who are educated, who are balanced. So far we have been saying these are fringe elements who are behind the attacks. But there is a danger that fringe elements may become the mainstream. To some extent they are succeeding also.
• Responding to questions about the letter, Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh told reporters that minorities are safe in India and that no one is allowed to discriminate on the basis of caste and religion. Between 2014 and 2015, Couto and other Christians in the national capital region of Delhi told Rajnath Singh how violence had picked up after Modi came to power, detailing at least five cases of attacks on churches in New Delhi following which extra police had been deployed to protect 240 churches in the capital.
• The prayer for our nation says, “Let the dreams of our founding fathers and the values of our Constitution – equality, liberty and fraternity – be always held in highest esteem. Let the people of all castes and creeds, all denominations and persuasions live in harmony and peace steering far away from hatred and violence." The prayer also focuses on the poor and the marginalised, saying, “Let the poor of our country be provided with the means of livelihood. Let the dalits, tribals and the marginalised be brought into the mainstream of nation building. Let justice and integrity prevail in every sphere of our life.”
• The prayer further says, "Protect our legislature as a place of discerning minds. Raise our judiciary as the hallmark of integrity, prudence and justice. Keep our print, visual and social media as the channels of truth for edifying discourses. Protect our institutions from the infiltration of the evil forces.” 

While the letter and prayer has no inflammable content, the underpinning is very clear that minorities have apprehensions about their safety, rights and privileges compromised. They are all living with their mouth shut for the last 4 years, with fear gripping them choking. Now that Modi & BJP got weakened, vulnerable and uncertain of wining no more elections owing to his worst performance in all fronts, it is natural that all suppressed sections of people will speak out their mind ventilating their grudge reflecting their anger. With minorities at 20%, dalits at 18% thoroughly alienated, there is no way BJP can win 2019 general elections unless oppositions parties fail to put up common candidates. But with Karnataka episode, Modi has himself united all the opposition parties, underwriting his own defeat. 

India losing its way, 70 years after independence

• In 1960, an American writer predicted that in an unstable India no outsider will be able to say with assurance where political legitimacy resides.
• Three years earlier, C.Rajagopalachari had predicted that “the centrifugal forces will ultimately prevail”, bringing anarchy or fascism. Older generation people, who had survived partition, mournfully surveyed the country’s future, some even hoping the British would come back.
• Even in 1969, India relied on wheat given away by America, and a “guest control order” specified that only 50 people could be invited to parties where food was served. To travel abroad, Indians required the approval of the Reserve Bank.
• India has not reduced poverty levels as dramatically as China. Still 250 million Indians live on less than four dollars a day, but the progress since the British left has been impressive.
• In 1947 life expectancy was 32 years, now it is 68. The per capita income in India was $439. Now it is US $1861, an all time high and was at record low of US$ 304 in 1960.
• In 1947 only 1,500 villages – a mere 0.025% – were electrified; now 97% of 6.41 lakh villages have electricity. After two centuries of British rule, literacy in India was only 12% of the population and now 74% are literate.
• Every change of government since 1947 has been via the ballot box, with the army never involved - something Greece, Spain, Portugal or even France can’t claim..

As its 70th anniversary approaches, India beset with fears? 

• The way, since Narendra Modi’s astonishing election victory in 2014, the country seems to be turning its back on the tolerant, secular society India’s founding fathers wanted. 
• Modi has always ridden two chariots: Modi’s real business of making India prosperous; and his Hindu business of appeasing his fanatical Hindu followers.
• Some people are confident that Modi will change India for the better, and that the Hindu business will amount to nothing.
• Yet Modi has proved a timid reformer, whose tinkering has included an overnight demonetization that led to such chaos that many people died.
• His Hindu followers have been given free rein. This has seen a ban on the slaughter of cows, and a growing intolerance of minorities and their lynching.
• Today in Mumbai, there is now a form of religious apartheid in housing. A Muslim client wanted to buy a flat in a suburb but the broker said “You are a Muslim. This building is not for Muslims. Hindus only.” 
• In some parts of Mumbai, the most vibrant city, have become so segregated that “owners say this building is for vegetarians only, so no Muslim, Christians, Jews, Parsis or even meat-eating Hindus”. Ironically 31% of Indians are vegetarian and 69% are non-vegetarian.
• In Mumbai of the 50's and 60's, all faiths lived side by side. 

Narendra Modi: Is he India's saviour, or sectarian with blood on his hands?